There’s also this, from Wab Kinew, a musician, author, broadcaster, educator and an NDP Member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Canada. He reminds us all that the action taken by the Indigenous water protectors at Standing Rock is a spiritual one. A spiritual one. In their cultural and spiritual traditions, water is sacred. Mni wiconi.

“Traditional Indigenous people do not see Standing Rock as activism. For people who have heard the words ‘mni wiconi’ since birth, this is simply answering the call of duty,” Kinew said.

He added that while everyone may not agree on how to fight climate change, the situation in North Dakota is a “powerful lesson for us in how not to pursue reconciliation.”

For the regina mom prayer is poetry, meditation, and song. She invites you to join in the global prayer in your own way. Register at praywithstandingrock.com so that they have an idea of the numbers, read the great information they have posted there, and keep abreast of ongoing activities at www.facebook.com/unify.

Wolf’s research for that article became the book, The End of America, which documents “how open societies become closed societies.” Her family’s friends, Holocaust survivors, urged her to explore a few texts and the result was what she called a “blueprint” that has been adapted by several societies when making a shift from an open to a closed society. In the HuffPo piece she named ten significant pieces of the blueprint and showed how they were at work in the USA at that time.

To complement Nick Fillmore’s work, trm thought she’d finally share, in point form, what she discovered by placing Wolf’s blueprint on Canada.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

What’s more terrifying to a parent than ‘child pornographers’? According to Vic Toews,the regina mom’s opposition to Bill C-30 — the Snoop and Spy bill — means that she stands with “the child pornographers”. How does that make a mother feel?

Women should be used to it, perhaps. Years ago, the Prime Minister suggested women’s groups are of the “left-wing fringe.”

More recently, as trm has noted, on the eve of the Joint Energy Board’s hearings on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver had choice words to describe those in opposition to the proposed pipeline. He painted “environmental and other radical groups” as those wanting to “block this opportunity to diversify ourtrade” regardless “the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth.” The groups have a “radical ideological agenda” and will “exploit any loophole they can find” to “kill good projects” with “funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economicinterest.”

Forest Ethics supports its former employee in his allegations that the PMO is trying to “to silence and intimidate non profit organizations like ForestEthics, and the thousands of citizens and civil groups who, like us, are concerned about the direction this country is taking and are speaking out.“

Item #5 above identifies ForestEthics as a harassed citizens’ group. It’s former employee Andrew Frank maintains that he and other employees were told the PMO considered them to be enemies of the state.

Recently, Canadians were advised that they may be placed on counter-terrorism watch lists if they are involved in “the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism” activities.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The conservative government has twice prorogued Parliament while critical debates and actions were underway that may have toppled the Minority government.

As you can clearly see, dear Reader, Canada is active in every area of the blueprint Wolf found. And, up against Nick Fillmore’s piece, there is definitely overlap. Canada is creeping towards closing down as a society, to becoming a fascist state.

Further to yesterday’s post about what some women have endured at the hands of police while detained by Toronto’s horrific police force during the G20 demos in Toronto, here is a compendium of links put together by my friend, Pete Garden, who runs Turning the Tide Bookstore in Saskatoon.

Dear friends, fellow community members and supporters of Turning the Tide Bookstore,

As many of you know, 20 of the most powerful people in the world and their respective entourages gathered in Toronto and Huntsville, Ontario for the G8/G20 meetings. Protecting them was a $1 billion dollar security apparatus including a 6 km long security fence and thousands of police and private security. Mobility of the entire city was limited by the security presence and in many areas of downtown Toronto, Charter rights were suspended before the meetings even began. The events which unfolded over the weekend saw thousands (some say upwards of 25,000) of protesters taking to the streets to bring their challenges and concerns with the policies of this elite group of leaders to the attention of the world. The weekend also saw militant protesters in the black bloc attack corporate property and police vehicles followed by the largest mass arrests of protesters (nearly 1,000 people) in Canadian history.

While black bloc tactics of property destruction were a divisive issue within the movement and public at large, protesters were united in one voice against the draconian police crackdown on overwhelmingly peaceful protests. According to long-time social justice activist an author Judy Rebick who as at a press conference with police representatives today, the Toronto police have admitted to receiving stand-down orders while property destruction took place and many people suspect that police cars were abandoned in the middle of streets as decoys to attract vandalism and were let to burn for over 30 minutes for media photo-ops. Many believe that the police used this situation as a pretense to brutally repress protesters not involved in property destruction (about 50 to 100 people were involved in the vandalism while nearly 1000 have been arrested).

Meanwhile, independent media journalists and social media tools were used to document what happened over the weekend and what thousands of people around the world are seeing is quite shocking. Other independent and a handful of mainstream were providing substantial critical coverage of what was going on within the G8/G20 meetings.

Many of us have been glued to our computers watching as our friends in Toronto bravely challenged the security apparatus and felt brunt of the violent crackdown of the state. We hope that once you have seen and read about what happened over the weekend that you will take action both to support the protesters who were arrested and do what you can to hold our governments and the police forces responsible for their actions.

What we hope to provide here is some of the most important coverage and analysis of the events that unfolded on the streets and behind the fences at the summit.

Taking Action:

Stay tuned for the announcement of a Saskatoon fundraiser for the G20 arrestees.